Hacker News Reader

Comment by hackalaugh | Hacker News Reader

Seems potentially unlikely that a consumer could own and (auto-)operate a self-driving vehicle at a rate competitive with Uber & Lyft (or whatever corp.), who could purchase in bulk and have their cars operate for significantly less.

View on HN

On the other hand, I imagine there will be lots of locations where Uber and Lyft won't serve with their own fleet, either because it's too small, or because it's too sparse. Having a program, or a separate competitor, that allowed people to submit their own vehicles and do their own upkeep might help those areas get served. Then again, those areas might be geographically small enough that you don't need a car (depending on weather). Who know, maybe there's a long tail there which is hard for the big players to capitalize on completely, given they need fleet servicing facilities if they are running their own cars.

Yes! The far suburbs of Nashville aren't going to see UberTeslaWaymo fleet cars; the utilization would be far too low. They'll see what they see right now: one or two drivers on Uber or Lyft. And the trip price will be higher to reflect the human driving the car.

Well, with respect to the topic of this thread, those are specifically the jobs which people might purchase the car and sub it out to a company for a shared profit. If the cars are autonomous, there's no need for the driver to be there. It could become the equivalent of a paper route, and extra way to make some cash on the side during what are traditionally non-work hours (in this case, the cleaning and mechanical upkeep of the car).

Cars deprecate by mile as much as by year (ignoring the initial drop which is only based on a non-zero preowner count instead of time or distance). So unlike a driver, who is as expensive while driving as while waiting, a robocab spending much of its time on cold standby would not require a terribly high premium on trip prices.

Adoption in the suburbs will still be much slower, but mostly because unused car storage is so much less of a headache out there.

If the robocab revolution happens, a lean ride broker where local community pools can offer spare capacity, within well defined availability goals for their members could be the Uber killer. Or Uber itself could be exactly that, given their roots in the claim that their drivers were not taxi operators but just ordinary people who occasionally give someone a lift for money in the cars they own primarily for personal use.

That's only if you think that people are 100% OK with using a random car every time they want to travel. I think they would be willing to pay a little extra to own a car to keep their stuff in at all times (e.g. I always leave my Sunglasses in the car)

As a city dweller, I would take random car over random parking spot every single time. Certainly does not apply to those who already pay a little extra for private parking though.

Using a random driverless car will be much cheaper than owning (perhaps roughly as expensive as taxis would be if there were no taxi driver who needed to get paid). Random cars can be in use virtually all-the-time every day. The portion of costs a single passenger pays will thus be small fraction of the total costs. For a car you own, at least as it works now, you generally pay 100% of costs. So it's not going to cost just "a little extra" to own your own car; as it works now owning a car results in huge levels of waste, while the expensive item sits doing nothing, occupying a (valuable) parking space.

I suppose you could own a driverless car and have it continuously deployed as an income-producer moving other people when you're not using it. That creates a lot of additional headaches and problems, though. E.g., how to make sure it's always available whenever you decide you want it? Or, will it be safe to leave your items in the car when it's used by others? (I would guess not).

What if you apply that logic to today's cars: own vs rent?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com